If not for someone else,
If not for God.

How many of us have those “if not for” stories?

How many of us have been saved by the best friend?
The bartender or a family member?

Was it just that we were so much more aware than others?

That we somehow overcame our drunkenness to rationalize that we should give our keys up to a friend or family member?

I’m so eager and yet so apprehensive to tell this story.
My near Henry Ruggs-like incident.

I’ll tell a story right now of my own mistake with alcohol. I was out with friends drinking a daiquiri watching a basketball game. I felt myself getting really drunk and not feeling well. Though I was surrounded by friends, I snuck off due to embarrassment for the state I was in and figured it was okay to drive myself home.

What took place over the next five hours hammered humility, empathy, and kindness into me. When I tell this story, I always tell the listeners that I wasn’t driving. It was God driving. God drove a distance of 7.1 miles in rush hour traffic, through busy intersections, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings, as I snapped in and out of my drunken consciousness.

The simple fact that this mistake could happen to anyone was pressed into my head like the curbs I hit, breaking my cars axels.

How much I wasn’t in control was slammed into me the way I slammed my foot into the brakes. Finally, I woke up long enough to understand that I needed to pull my car over.

What I awoke to was a car full of vomit and the fear over what I had done but also the awareness of God’s presence in my car. I could have died; I could have killed someone. I could have been arrested, but God saw that it was okay for me to just go home.

We can all say stop being stupid, but we all still make mistakes.

As for the Ruggs situation, I would rather mourn the loss of life than point the finger. I would rather acknowledge the fact that a person made a mistake and would take it back if they could.